REMEMBERING THE ARTIST ROBERT DE NIRO, SR to Premiere 6/9 on HBO

In 1945, Robert De Niro, Sr.'s work was included in the Autumn Salon at Peggy Guggenheim's Art of This Century gallery along with that of Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. The next year, he had his first solo exhibition at Guggenheim's gallery, an extremely prestigious honor for the young figurative painter. But while De Niro continued to show at the highly regarded Charles Egan Gallery throughout the 1950s, his career began to slip out of the critical spotlight, and he struggled for recognition in subsequent decades.

The HBO Documentary Films presentation REMEMBERING THE ARTIST ROBERT DE NIRO, SR., a deeply moving portrait of the painter told by those who knew him best, debuts MONDAY, JUNE 9 (9:00-9:45 p.m. ET/PT). An official selection of the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, the film was directed by Perri Peltz (HBO's "The Education of Dee Dee Ricks") and Geeta Gandbhir (Emmy(R)-winning editor of HBO's "If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don't Rise").

As part of his mission to honor and preserve his father's legacy, actor Robert De Niro, Jr. reads from De Niro, Sr.'s letters and journals, providing his own recollections of the artist's personal and professional struggles. The film weaves together archival family footage and interviews with the artist himself, as well as with art experts, artists who worked alongside him and, most affectingly, his son.

At the heart of the film is Robert De Niro, Sr.'s beautiful work, which will be exhibited in conjunction with the documentary's debut at New York City's DC Moore Gallery from June 6-July 11. These vibrant paintings are a reminder that art movements can be so powerful that they can obscure the work of talented artists who don't fit a particular genre.

REMEMBERING THE ARTIST includes insights from Robert Storr, dean of the Yale University School of Art, scholar and critic Irving Sandler, art advisor Megan Fox Kelly and fellow artists Albert Kresch and Paul Resika, who explain how De Niro, Sr.'s professional career fell in and out of step with the American art scene, which changed drastically throughout his lifetime.

In the early 1930s, avant-garde European artists escaped the politically charged atmosphere at home and took teaching positions in the U.S., exposing American art students to the newest trends in Europe. One of the leading teachers was Hans Hofmann, an abstract expressionist painter who set up schools in New York City and Provincetown, Mass., where an entire generation of young American artists studied. De Niro, Sr. studied in both locations with Hofmann, who called him one of his most promising students ever.